Tutorial by Examples

The job of the linker is to link together a bunch of object files (.o files) into a binary executable. The process of linking mainly involves resolving symbolic addresses to numerical addresses. The result of the link process is normally an executable program. During the link process, the linker wi...

Compiling C programs requires you to work with five kinds of files: Source files: These files contain function definitions, and have names which end in .c by convention. Note: .cc and .cpp are C++ files; not C files. e.g., foo.c Header files: These files contain function prototypes and va...

Before the C compiler starts compiling a source code file, the file is processed in a preprocessing phase. This phase can be done by a separate program or be completely integrated in one executable. In any case, it is invoked automatically by the compiler before compilation proper begins. The prepro...

After the C pre-processor has included all the header files and expanded all macros, the compiler can compile the program. It does this by turning the C source code into an object code file, which is a file ending in .o which contains the binary version of the source code. Object code is not directl...

As of the C 2011 Standard, listed in §5.1.1.2 Translation Phases, the translation of source code to program image (e.g., the executable) are listed to occur in 8 ordered steps. The source file input is mapped to the source character set (if necessary). Trigraphs are replaced in this step. Contin...